No one was surprised that Free! got a second season, but I was sure surprised to see a season called "Eternal Summer" start in the middle of winter. It makes some sense—no one on the Iwatobi team was a third-year (and thus in danger of graduating), but their rivals at Samezuka had to say farewell to their captain and introduce a new one.

Back in elementary school, Haruka, Makoto, Rin, and the younger Nagisa swam together in a relay and brought a championship home to their local swim club. Afterward, however, Rin moved to Australia to pursue his swimming at a prestigious school, his sights set on one day swimming in the Olympics. Haruka, who loved the water, stopped swimming, effectively dissolving the relay team; before too much longer, the swim club closed its doors altogether.

I got there at around 10:45, just in time to wander around hopelessly lost in the labyrinthine convention center for a half an hour before finding my way to the “Crossdressing for Fun and Profit in Anime and Manga” panel. The title made me skeptical, but the description sounded good - there’s a lot of ignorance about gender-related issues in anime fandom as well as a good deal of ethnocentrism and things can get ugly pretty quickly.

After the events of episode seven and the angst race, Free! has definitely taken a turn for the angstier, with lots of side glances, snide smirks, and glares. Rin is still an insufferable asshole, obsessed with winning, and even the addition of more backstory in episode ten can't help him (in fact, it just made it worse, since there wasn't much of a reason for his actions). However, Free! has made it clear just how amazing the rest of the Iwatobi Swim Club is.

Seven episodes in and it's pretty obvious that KyoAni knows their main demographic. We all knew from the start, but these recent episodes have definitely played right into the hands of the fujoshi crowd.